Using modern day techniques and taking well over 750 hours to complete, each part was coated to perfection in the USA using the electroplating process.

It's also got a saddle that's covered in alligator:

The one of a kind customized seat is covered in the finest chocolate brown alligator and absolutely beautiful.

I agree that it's quite beautiful, and furthermore that this misshapen turd perched precariously upon a gilded pillar is a poignant metaphor for America--and if you need me to hold your hand and walk you through that metaphor, the gilded pillar is central and south America, the turd is the USA, and your ass is Canada.

Think about it.

Scoff if you will, but if nothing else, this bicycle boasts the world's most expensive set of Avid mechanical disc brakes:

I don't know about you, but for a million clams I expect hydraulics that use a brake fluid made from the semen and tears of Kim Jong-un.

The House of Solid Gold’s CEO, Mr. Power, announced recently his elation about working closely with The Way to Happiness Foundation International, a global non-profit, non-religious charitable organization whose sole mission is to reverse the moral decay of society by restoring trust and honesty the world over through the publication and widespread distribution of "The Way to Happiness" booklet, a common sense guide to better living. The majority, 90% or more, of the proceeds from the sale of this golden bicycle will go directly to this global organization.

Five minutes ago it never even occurred to me that anybody might write tandem as "tandum," and now it turns out that this is actually the preferred spelling on Craigslist.

In other news, America's educators continue to do their very best to frighten children away from riding bicycles and promote the agenda of the Automotive Industrial Complex, and to that end here's a self-proclaimed "former physicist" explaining to a bunch of kids why attempting to ride a bicycle without wearing a helment means certain death:

Okay, how do you become a "former physicist?" Can you be disbarred? If so, I suppose one good way to go about it would be to build a ridiculous medieval watermelon-smashing contraption and use it to scare the shit out of kids--because, as the former physicist explains, "it's just like if you were riding a bike without a helmet."

Yeah, just like it.

Oh, and how do you have a crash on your bicycle? All sorts of ways. See, it's totally beyond your control, as his fellow presenter goes out of her way to explain:

"Or you just fall. Sometimes it just happens. And you don't have to be going fast, it just can happen."

Hear that, kids? It doesn't matter what you do. You have no free will. One minute you're puttering along on the sidewalk at 3mph, and the next minute you're dead. Dead!

See, it's important to create a free-floating specter of terror and anxiety and associate that with riding bicycles in order to make sure kids don't grow up thinking that cycling is a reasonable choice.

Anyway, here's the former physicist loading up his atomic watermelon smasher:

And...splat!

"You don't want that to happen to you," he says, proving conclusively that dropping a heavy hammer on a piece of stationary fruit held firmly in place with a wedge will cause that piece of fruit to explode.

I wonder if it ever makes the former physicist uncomfortable that while Neil deGrasse Tyson is opening millions of children's minds to the infinite possibilities of the universe, he's fucking up perfectly good watermelons to scare kids off bikes--and he's not even succeeding in that, because the kids just think it's hilarious. This guy's not an educator, he's a freaking prop comic! Why not just skip the bullshit propaganda and let the kids watch a Gallagher VHS instead?

But wait! Here's the same stunt again with the watermelon wearing a helment!

And guess what? The hammer puts a big freaking hole in the helment!

"The crack that you see in that is the crack that would have happened to your skull," the former physicist explains:

Yes. He's right. If you build a catapult out of a shipping pallet and a hammer, pull the hammer back, place your head under it, and then let the hammer go, you will probably crack open your skull. I can't wait until his next demonstration, wherein he uses a pile driver and a bunch of bananas to show you why riding a skateboard without a cup will pulverize your genitals.

Hey, I'm no physicist, former or otherwise, but I do know this: if anyone ever tries to teach any one of my seventeen (17) children a "lesson" like this, I'll put that watermelon right up their ass.

Anyway, there are way worse things out there for kids than riding a bike without a helment, and most of them are considered good in this country. Take religion for example. "Wait, you mean you'll fill my children's heads with lies and molest them? Sounds great, sign 'em up!"

chocolate brown alligator - Isn't this a slang term for a big turd? One with a rough, scaly, hostile-looking surface?

Also a hyphen would be nice in chocolate-brown, though you might as well skip it; brown is brown; everybody knows what brown is. "Oh you mean brown like chocolate?" Being overly descriptive of colors is for Ed Norton types before they meet their inner Brad Pitt.

I work with a psycho who got in trouble for hanging squirrel corpses from a tree. He thought the sight of hanging dead rodents would keep the other live rodents out of his bird feeders. His neighbors complained.

Look at Jong-un! Seems like he's masturbating as the photo's being taken and therefore began crying about 30 seconds later. Brake fluid bonanza... all wasted I'm afraid! Note to self - when photographed do not try overhard to look like badass.

Meanwhile, at this very moment, a group of riders is competing in #crushthecommonwealth, a race across Pennsylvania (this year Philadelphia->Pittsburgh). 400 miles / 615 k. The first riders left this morning at 5 am, and will arrive tomorrow afternoon.

Gold, being buttery soft, offers great multidimensional compliance but has stiffness for shit...meaning stiffness similar to shit. The bike is a terrible deal. For $1M, at today's prices, you could buy 42 pounds of pure gold...or buy 41.2 pounds and with the money left over buy the Freddest chariot on the market.

#1. Solid-gold bikes commit heinous misplaced modifier: "Using modern day techniques and taking well over 750 hours to complete, each part was coated...." I mean, I know it's a SOLID GOLD (plated) bike, but that's one long production schedule.

#2. Corpus linguistics makes an appearance ("tandum").

#3. Cats. Playas for life--until they get strung up in a tree. Racist cat killer?

Over the weekend, I watched a five year old ride a bike for the first time without training wheels. He crashed every time he came to a stop. Only his arms and legs saved his head from hitting the ground.

After a few dozen crashes, he learned to stick his legs out save himself from the inevitable life ending fall. Then his dad took him on an epic three mile ride around the neighborhood.

Then the kid taught his 35-year- old aunt to ride a bike. She's a spin bike only urbanite, who learned in only a couple of minutes.

Then the kid took her on another epic three mile lap of the neighborhood.

I wouldn't fuck around with Kim Jong un, his father, Il, won the tour de france in his first and only attempt completing the entire 21 stages, including rest days, in under an hour. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

That gold-plated bike harkens back to the decadent days of Czarist Russia, not the USA. It's a good thing that Russia was replaced by the affluent, and soon to be resurrected, glories of the Soviet Union.

But lets get real here. Only an heir to Arabic oil money is likely to buy the gaudy heap.

We here at the Happy Happy Institute for Studies have been conducting a huge study of helmet use and technology. First we designed and built helmets made of watermelon rinds tanned in high-grade alligator feces. We had a few leftover solid-gold bikes to use as test vehicles, but we ran out of subhuman volunteers, so we switched to cats. We built a fleet of cat-sized solid gold tandum bikes and painstakingly taught the cats to ride them, wearing the helmets, which are equipped with remote e-meters to monitor the cats' levels of clarity. This took a long time. Then we equipped with bikes with radio-controlled brakes on the front wheels, and sent the cats down long hills in San Francisco, some wearing helmets and some not. When we crashed the bikes, the cats, no matter how fast they were traveling, leaped off, landed on their feet and ran off. We all had a good laugh and then we went and lay down in tubs of gold coins and relaxed. That's science for you - it doesn't always work right. But I, Mr. Power, do not care.

when I was 5, about a week after taking the training wheels off my bike, my older brother and his friend convinced by to take a sweet ramp. It was super steep and taller than me at the time. I barely made it to the top and tipped over the edge falling about 5 feet straight down onto my face. It hurt. I wasn't wearing a helmet on my face. 40 years later, I still don't.

Anonymous you're not "in" the first ten. (Not in me anyway... can't speak for the other 9.) Je suis chez les premiers dix might be closer, but I'm not sure... or maybe you would use en, but I'm pretty sure dans is wrong and you need a plural.

Ya know.... Nicolas Fouquet, Secretary of the French Treasury for Louis XIV, got into big, big trouble for the welcoming gala he threw for the King at his new and first of its kind palace, Vaux le Vicomte.

The King, at dinner, congratulated Fouquet on the excellence of his "plate", his service dinner plates, which he thought were the normal style, gold-plated, i.e., gold OVER silver. (Plata means silver in Spanish, probably in Latin, too, and has come to mean any of our modern plates over time).

Anyway the King congratulated Fouquet on the quality of his "plate". Fouquet foolishly replied, "It is not plate, Sire, it is gold," i.e., solid gold.

So two weeks after this faux pas, Fouquet was arrested, tried, spent the rest of his life in prison; Vaux le Vicomte was confiscated and its furniture taken; Fouquet's wife died in poverty; And Louis XIV, not to be outdone, took Fouquet's architect, interior decorator, and garden designer, away to a little hunting lodge outside of Paris, and created Versailles.

So perhaps it's just as well as this stupid fat bike here is only gold-plated!

You can become a former physicist by dissing Physics. However, Physics will then send goons to harass you, declare you a "suppressive person", sue you, spread false rumors about you, and generally do whatever it can to destroy your life.

Is it really, REALLY, necessary to put the cents into the price of your golden bike if sells for one million dollars?

From the website: " $1,000,000.00 "

Thank God the photographer is "world renowned" (despite the fact that I wasn't aware of him)--it just wouldn't do if the photographer was just a photographer.

Just as it wouldn't do if the Yorkshire knitting lady was not "prolific". Gotta let the people know, this is not just a regular website with good ol' regular folks, it's a super-duper website with super-duper uber-people....

okay. a questionaire for all the Scientology (or is it scienturgic?) readers.

How do you electroplate a non-conducting plastic brake & shift cable housing?

robot sez there are 11 52995634 reasons to buy a gold bike. But I'm still keeping my gold in those cute canadian maple leaf gold circles although I'm hoping they put cute little george on it soon to replace the old hag.

I think I am with you there Roille - I'm not native French, but I would go with je suis parmi les dix premiers.

@David Pearce - I haven't heard that story in a while, and it is a good one. I have been to Vaux le Vicomte, and it is easier to traipse around than its bigger younger sibling. Very pretty if you like that kind of thing.

so you think they lied to us. They just sprayed on some faux gold goop?

Also, I can't find where they take paypal. I think snobby is making this up. From their website:

The House of Solid Gold accepts the following credit cards : Visa, MasterCard, JBC, American Express, UnionPay, Diner’s Club and Discover. Cards issued by banks domiciled outside the United States of America must be international credit card.

Wishiwasmerckz, not sure how unique "woosies" is to Snobby, but for this Companion Reader Snobby Dictionary Project to gain any traction on Kickstarter, it needs to be as comprehensive as possible, so woosies is in.

The Snobby Dictionary so far;

Helment.

Crabon.

Tandum.

Breaks.

Peddles.

Scranus.

Vulvanus.

Woosies.

plastic dork chariot.

dick breaks.

smugness flotilla.

pants yabbies.

those curly handlebars like they use in the Tour de France.

Cover design suggestions are now being accepted as well as more lingua Snob words for the inside of the dictionary.

Although the Handy Companion Reader Snobby Dictionary Guide will, of course, be a scholarly work, we will eschew the practise of categorising archaic entries into categories like "archaic" because, you know, it takes effort and commitment to do that shit.

But rest assured your splendid submissions have been gratefully received and added to list.

At decent intervals, we will update the Snobbysphere on the progress of The Essential Handy Companion Reader Snobby Dictionary Guide and look forward to receiving more entries from this august community.

Contributors may wish to start thinking about definitions; we'd like to restrict the definition of 'scranus' , for instance, to about ten pages or fifteen for the illustrated edition.

Speaking of woo hoo speeds, what is the fastest speed a road bike has ever achieved? Wikipedia says people on recumbents and behind vehicles go ridiculous speeds (166mph+)!!, but what about sans motors, a person on a regular, two-triangle road bike?

Best post evar! The seat metaphor was deeply and especially moving. I am still thinking about it. And I know you all like to joke about it. But if you ever do decide to give up on that warped country you call home, Mexico is close and is a pretty nice place to ride a bike.

Babs, you crazy sexy crazy lady, the son of a Saudi oil baron who buys the golden fatty won't be wearing the plating off the drivetrain by peddleling, he'll have his trained sled leopard team out front pulling him across the sand dunes. He'll be occupied enough surveying his domain through gold rimmed mirror reflective aviator sunglasses, unslinging on a whim his gold plated AK to take pot shots at the dirty peasants.

Later, he'll recover the cost of the golden bullets from the mourning peasant familys.

Its going to be a great summer. One boat ride and one back bay tug job. Just may name her THE TUG BOAT. There was a fishing tournament in progress. Everyone was tryin to get something to nibble their worm.

Ce - thank you for that. Um, and yeah, but does his team of big fat sled cats help him break any land speed records while he's taking pot shots at the peasants?

I've been told in no uncertain terms that 77 kph IS the record I'm looking for, because yada yada yada, even though I was pretty certain I was interested in finding out just how fast a woo- hooing Fred can possibly go.

Well, I've just completed some extensive research and have discovered that a leopard can run at up to 58 koalamaters per hour (36 mph) over short distances (Wikipedia 2014). Now, we need to find out what the optimal sled leopard team size for sprint distances would be. Ideally, I would scientifically trial a range of leopard team sizes, but given that this is not an option available to me at this time, I will make some assumptions based on the information currently available in the literature (youtube - it has words too). It seems that a typical bikejoring team consists of just 2 dogs, but I think in the situation where an ultra-wealthy oil prince where going for an all out sled leopard speed record, and money was not an issue, he would do best to model his team size on the 8 dog team that set the Guinness World Record for the fastest 100m dog sled on sand. Now, as a former physicist, all I need to do is use the equation "e=(BS)-z³", where "B" is single leopard top speed, "S" is sled leopard team size and "z" is the weight of the golden valve caps (the critical rotational weight). This should give us "e", the expected sled leopard team speed. So, by my calculations, using randomly selected units of measure (random is scientific), an 8 leopard team should give an average billionaire on a stock standard gold plated fat bike a top speed of 463 km/h.

Speaking of plastic dork chariots... the head of BC Master's cycling association is selling his $13,000 specimen for just shy of $4000. I will ask him for a photo and details for a bit of show and tell later on.

"Rabbit corpses core of new art exhibit - Canada - CBC News Sep 10, 1999 - A new art exhibit is already sparking controversy in Winnipeg, ... and the exhibit features dead rabbits hanging from trees."Maybe the dead cat thing is an attempt at art in the fashion of our neighbors to the north....

That gold thing is a 2013 Salsa Mikluk 2 XL aluminum. MSRP for complete bike $2450. Even with the minimal amount of electroplate gold, and if the electroplaters charged $100/hour, it can't be worth more that $90K USD.

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About Me

While I love cycling and embrace it in all its forms, I'm also extremely critical. So I present to you my venting for your amusement and betterment. No offense meant to the critiqued. Always keep riding!